, and followed cook.

FABLE LXVI.

THE RAVEN, SEXTON, AND WORM.

(_To Laura._)

My Laura, your rebukes are prudish;
For although flattery is rudish,
Yet deference, not more than just,
May be received without disgust.
Am I a privilege denied
Assumed by every tongue beside?
And are you, fair and feminine,
Prone to reject a verse benign?
And is it an offence to tell
A fact which all mankind knows well?
Or with a poet's hand to trace
The beaming lustre of your face?
Nor tell in metaphor my tale,
How the moon makes the planets pale?
I check my song; and only gaze,
Admiring what I may not praise.

If you reject my tribute due,
I'll moralise--despite of you.
To moralise a theme is duty:
My muse shall moralise of beauty.

Amidst the galaxy of fair,
Who do not moralise, the ear
Might be offended to be told
That beauty ever can grow old.
Though you by age must lose much more
Than ever beauty lost before,
You will regard it, when 'tis flown,
As if it ne'er had been your own.
Were you by Antoninus taught?
Or is it native strength of thought,
To view with such an equal mind
The fleeting bloom to doom consigned.
Those eyes, in truth, are only clay:
As diamonds, e'en so are they.
And what is beauty in her power?
The tyrant of the passing hour.
How baseless is all human pride?
Naught have we whereon to confide.
Why lose we life in anxious cares,
And lay up hoards for future years?
Or can they cheer the sick, or buy
One hour of breath to those who die?
For what is beauty but a flower,
Grass of the field, which lives its hour?
And what of lordly man the sway,
The tyrant of the passing day?

The laws of nature hold their reign
O'er man throughout her whole domain.
The monarch of long regal line
Possesses dust as frail as mine:
Nor can he any more than I
Fever or restless pains defy.
Nor can he, more than I, delay
The mortal period of his day.

Then let my muse remember aye
Beauty and grandeur still are clay.
The king and beggar in the tomb
Commingling in the dust and doom.

Upon a venerable yew,
Which in the village churchyard grew,
Two ravens sat. With solemn croak
Thus to his mate a raven spoke:--

"Ah! ah! I scent upon the blast